4. Possible Ways Forward
Process and Product
The LARA Project is committed to finding ways in which the period abroad may be more successfully integrated with the rest of the degree programme. The various "packages" of activities undertaken by students (study-placement, work-placement, assistantship) all have their own disadvantages when it comes to assessing and accrediting the academic and educational experience of residence abroad and, as has been suggested, it is no doubt that fact that has led many HEIs to prefer the assessment of activities that their own staff have set and marked and an accreditation at pass/fail level only.
Existing assessment methods tend to concentrate on the outcome, the "product", such as a dissertation or a set of language assignments. However, the assessment of experiential learning, which is beginning to spread across the sector, indicates that there is a developing concern with the learning process and with the elaboration of methods of evaluating and assessing it.
LARA has argued that it is necessary to transfer much of the responsibility for the learning process during the period abroad to the student so that he or she can benefit as fully as possible from the learning opportunities that present themselves. That assumes, of course, that the students have been trained in the methods they need to apply in order to control their own learning but, if effective preparation has taken place during the year before the period abroad, they can rely largely on their own initiative to build up their intercultural knowledge and understanding as well as their linguistic skills and proficiency. The kind of programme proposed by LARA moves the main emphasis from the activities deriving from the student's study-placement or work-placement to the learning process that goes on both within and without their "day job".
| The two LARA sub-projects, Language Tasks and Strategies and Intercultural Learning, have produced materials designed to (a) develop in the students an awareness of the need to take responsibility for their own learning and (b) provide them with the skills and understanding necessary to learn from their experience and to develop progressively in both the linguistic and intercultural spheres. See the LARA publications: Language Tasks and Strategies for Students Abroad, International Newsfile and Introduction to Ethnography for Language Learners. |
If, as LARA suggests, the learning process is linked directly to language assignments and an intercultural project that are assessed by the home department, the criticism often levelled at assessment of the learning process rather than the product, i.e. that it is not sufficiently academic or rigorous, loses its force. There is indeed scope for the inclusion of an element of assessment of the experiential learning involved, as set out above, provided it does not constitute more than a small percentage of the assessment for the period abroad as a whole.
The importance of giving due weight to the learning process can be acknowledged and formalised by the use of learning agreements, the use of which is beginning to be accepted within the sector. The opportunities offered by the learning agreement are considered in the next section